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Sunday, January 23, 2011

I saw Sara Daneshpour in concert at the United Church. She opened with Haydn's Piano Sonata in F major. She played with the sparkle, delicacy, and elegance that Haydn requires. Dressed in a long black jacket with a white blouse with a great ruffle, she was perfectly dressed for 18th century music. With any luck a record label will give her a contract for all of Haydn's sonatas.

Also on the program was Chopin's famous Sonata no.2 in B-flat minor. She played the third movement's funeral march with the haunting emotion that it requires. The final Presto followed perfectly from the third movement, and the selection of Chopin's Etude op. 10 no. 12 was in C minor was the perfect choice to follow the famous Sonata no. 2.

After intermission we were treated to Schumann's ABEGG Variations, which was played with the caressing warmth you want to hear in Schumann. She played Frank with wonderful emotion, if you like Frank, which I don't.

She finished with a riveting, disturbing, and compelling performance of Prokofiev's Toccata.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

I am coming across more and more boring corporate blogs. The blog posts consist of new hire and promotion announcements, new products and product upgrades, contract awards and similar fare. The prose is written in the style of classic impersonal corporate press release.

These blogs would be interesting to prospective customers checking up on the company, reporters who were looking for background and similar readers.

In other words, these blogs provide useful information to individuals trying to find out more about the company.

These blogs also help with search engine visibility by continuously providing fresh content.

There is a great deal to be said for "good enough" business writing.

To have a truly excellent blog, the kind that drives traffic to your web site and establishes thought leadership, you really need to work at it or hire an expert. But to simply communicate your news and enhance search engine visibility, good enough is good enough.

I recently read the most delightful book, The Man Who Lied to His Latop. I hope that it becomes a of business and technology classic, because it certainly deserves to be.

The central thesis of the book is that human beings are social creatures and that we react socially even when dealing with machines. It also seems that our social relationships with our computers teach us a great deal about our social relationships with out fellow human beings.

I especially recommend the chapter on teams and team building. It seems all those expensive trust building exercises would be better replaced with a weekly pizza party for teams who met their goals.

Professional communicators will be interested in the final chapter on persuasion. Nass talks a great deal about expertise and trust and how, of these two, trust is by far the more important factor.

It was recently suggested to me that I create a Facebook page for my company as Facebook has more users than Google.

That, by itself, is not a reason to create Facebook presence. For example, if someone wants to research me or my company, they would do a search on a search engine, not Facebook. Typically Facebook is not used for research.

If you are a consumer goods company, you could use your Facebook page to offer discounts, send out announcements, and otherwise connect with your customers.

If you are a political candidate or political cause, you definitely need a Facebook page. In general, I think that Facebook is an excellent tool for non-profits.

A software company might want to use Facebook to run their user group community, although I don't think it would be the best choice.

But for a small PR agency, a Facebook page just does not make sense.

Just because a tool exists, does not mean you should use it.

Edit -Jim Horton has written great surveys of corporate use of Facebook and Linked In. He notes that most corporations are failing to integrate their use of social media, that is, link to their Twitter feeds and blogs from their Facebook and/or Linked In page. He also shares my view that it is not necessary for a corporation to have a site on either network.

The Adzookie tell me that they have a new pay-per-click mobile advertising service. I have taken a look at it and it seems like a good service. Readers, if any of you try this, let me know how it works for you.

My congratulations to the Adzookie people for being an early mover on this and good luck with their business model.

There is no doubt in my mind that the future of communications will be centered on the small screen.